Direction and Socio-spatial Theory

Matthew G. Hannah holds the Chair in Cultural Geography at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. His research has addressed relations between constructions of space, power and state knowledge, as well as various aspects of social theory and historical geography. His previous books include Governmentality and the Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth Century America (2000) and Dark Territory in the Information Age: Learning from the West German Census Controversies of the 1980s (2010).

• IntroductionPart I: Foundations1. Political economies of attention2. Toward a political phenomenology of attention3. The directedness of practicePart II: Turning-in-the-world4. Turning subject5. Turning-as-relation: direction, alienation and montage6. Turning and reificationPart III: Direction, socio-spatial theory and ethics7. Occupation and directed practice: outline of a political economy8. Visualizing directed social practiceConclusion: ethics and directional responsibility

"It has been a very long time since I have read a book as lucidly argued and learned as this one. Starting with the basic fact of human finitude and the simple notion that a human being can attend to only so much at once, Matthew Hannah proceeds step by step to reinvigorate and rework social-spatial theory -- an enterprise that has somehow underplayed what human attention implies for human being and becoming more generally. Hannah has an abiding concern with the irreducible embodiment of human being and he carefully shows what is at stake when contemporary capitalism places our embodiment under increasing strain. Hannah's intelligence is truly rare and the clarity with which he reveals it is even rarer. He is comfortable navigating a stunning range of scholarship, also seeming never to lose his way nor his purpose in underscoring the ethical dimensions of this project. This is a book for all geographers, all spatial thinkers and practitioners, indeed for anyone who is philosophically, ethically, and critically inclined. Direction and Social-spatial Theory is a terrific and marvelous achievement." George Henderson, Professor of Geography, University of Minnesota, USA